Built
in Buffalo

How
to
Research Local Architecture Cynthia
Van Ness

While
Buffalo's major
architectural
treasures are increasingly
pictured online, the resources needed to research ordinary houses,
factories, commercial buildings, churches,
and other historic properties are not
online and many may never be
digitized.

Relevant links have
been added wherever possible, but out of necessity, this website
focuses on the wealth of offline sources. This site is best utilized by
those who can do in-person research at:

If you are a Buffalo
property owner, dig out your
title search. The title search
or "abstract
of title" shows the
chain of ownership of your
parcel of land going back (in most cases) to the Holland
Land
Company.
Having the names of owners gives you a way to utilize city
directories, Common Council Proceedings, and other sources listed
below.

A title
abstract dating
back to (say) 1805 does not mean that your house was built in 1805.
It means that the ownership of your plot of
ground has
been traced back to 1805. Title
abstracts do NOT show when structures were
erected or demolished on your land. Their sole purpose is to
show that no one else has a claim on your land.

A famous name on
your title does not necessarily mean that a VIP lived in your
house.
Then as now, many prominent Buffalonians invested in land and property
other
than their residences.

Real estate agents
routinely date old Buffalo houses
as built in 1900 or another year
ending in zero. The City of Buffalo Property database (see below) is
equally inaccurate. Don't be wedded
to this
date. It is just an educated or, more often, an uneducated
guess.

Chances are good that
your Buffalo building was built
between
1865 and
1965. Precious little survives from before the Civil War, and Buffalo
was
essentially built out by 1965. To roughly date your building, study
the history of American architectural styles and architecture. Here
is some recommended reading.

BECPL
= Grosvenor Room of the Buffalo & Erie
County
Public LibraryBHM = Research Library at the
Buffalo History MuseumBSC
= Butler Library at Buffalo State CollegeUB
= One of several libraries at the State
University of
New York at Buffalo

Item

Years
Available

What
Will It Tell Me?

Where
Is It?

Architectural
Plans & Blueprints

Mainly
20th
Century

Unfortunately,
there are no large or comprehensive
collections of local architectural plans and blueprints. A lucky
homeowner might find original house plans stuffed in the attic. The
City of Buffalo did not require owners to submit building plans or
drawings until the early 20th century. Nineteenth century house plans
and
blueprints are scarce. Some builders knew how to erect
certain house types without custom blueprints the same way you know how
to cook
certain meals without recipes.

Then as now, many average-income families could not afford a private
architect and
bought house plans from catalogs. Aladdin is one such company
and
their catalogs are online

There are now hundreds of house plan books online in full text at
Google
Books. We made a list of all we could find.

The Avery
Index, a proprietary database,
is the premier source for locating
articles from architectural periodicals. There are dozens of citations
for Buffalo alone. BECPL has the print volumes and UB subscribes to the
database.

These directories
concentrated on Buffalo’s
wealthy west side and usually omitted South and East
Buffalo. Like Buffalo City Directories (see below), they contain a
geographic section, which lists families by street address.
The
Buffalo Address Books are online at
NewYorkHeritage.org.

City
directories, also called Polk
Directories, list Buffalo
residents in order
by last name, usually including occupations. From 1930 to the
present,
city directories have a street section, listing occupants by address.
For those with deep pockets, EDR (link at right) will compile city
directory reports on a given property.

The
City of Buffalo began issuing building permits
as soon as it was incorporated in 1832. Permits required Common
Council approval. If you have a wood frame house, the permit will date
your building. It appears
that permits were not required for masonry or brick buildings until the
early 20th century.

For 1832-1887, check the index for the owner’s last
name.

From
1887-1906, permits are grouped in the index under Permits
and
arranged by owner’s name.

From 1907-1950, the Permits
are
arranged by address.

Original permits from 1895 to present are on file
at City Hall, Room 301.

The Grosvenor Room has over
400 scrapbooks
of newspaper
articles about homes, houses of worship, hotels & taverns,
schools,
businesses, charities, major buildings, theaters, transportation, and
prominent Buffalonians. The scrapbooks are indexed in the Local History
File (see below).

About
3,000 buildings in Buffalo have been
documented since the 1970s on what are informally known as Blue Forms.
The best documented neighborhoods are Allentown, Hamlin Park,
Broadway-Fillmore, Grant-Ferry- Forest, and Triangle. They may be seen
by appointment by contacting the City of Buffalo
Preservation Board

Studying
business records is often the only way to
conclusively identify clients, dates, and everything a firm designed.
Most Buffalo architects have come and gone without their business
records
being saved. Try searching WorldCat with the
architect's name in the Author field.

If
you are researching a building that you do not
own and/or do not have a title search for, all
property transactions in Erie County are in the Erie
County
Clerk's office. Some records from 1808-1964 are now online.

Many
graduate students at UB and elsewhere have
devoted their academic years to studying architects, buildings, styles
& periods, neighborhoods, city planning, and urban history in
Buffalo. UB has the largest collection of theses relevant to Buffalo.

In
years ending in zero (and some years ending in
5),
federal & state census enumerators went door to door collecting
demographic data on the members of every household in Erie County.
Fortunately for architectural researchers, census records are arranged
geographically (by address), so you do not need to know the name of an
owner or occupant to find a specific building. Census research will
narrow down when a house was built and identify who lived in it. All
surviving census records are on microfilm and the federal ones are
online at Ancestry.com. Online indexes rarely include
addresses,
however.

The
correspondence, photographs, plans, and other
documentation of Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D.
Martin House
are preserved in the UB Archives. About 600 photos from this collection
are online at UB and NewYorkHeritage.org.

Five
neighborhoods
have
been carefully surveyed to the level of individual buildings: Black
Rock, Prospect Hill, Broadway-Fillmore, Triangle (South
Park/Abbot Rd.), and
Grant-Ferry-Forest, which stretches east almost to Emwood.
Includes photos.

Is
your house or building a designated landmark?
Is it in a preservation district or on the National
Register? The links
at the right show which properties and neighborhoods in Buffalo have
which designations. The National Register Information Service is
searchable by city/town or name of building.

Street
maps of Buffalo are useful for tracing how
the city expanded and developed over time. By comparing older and newer
maps, you can see when your neighborhood came into existence. See also Sanborn
Maps.

Newspaper
indexes, whether in the form of
pre-computer card files or online databases, are essential for finding
articles about people, places, things, and events in
Buffalo. BECPL calls their newspaper index the Local History
File.
Buffalo newspapers from 1811 to the present are on microfilm.

The New York State Newspaper Project provides a comprehensive list of
newspapers published in Erie County and who owns them.

When
one exists, an obituary often provides a wealth
of biographical information about the architect or former occupant of
your building, including employer, interests, memberships, next of kin,
and maybe a photograph.

Frederick
Law Olmsted and his sons
designed about
35 projects for Buffalo & Erie County, including public parks
and
private residences. To get a list, search the Olmsted Research Guide
to the right by city/community.

Period
photographs are invaluable for
understanding a building's evolution over time. Unfortunately, there
aren't surviving pictures of every single building in Buffalo. Interior
pictures are especially rare. BHM has the largest
collection of
Buffalo house pictures. They are not digitized and must be
viewed in person.

Published
roughly every
10 years, these oversized atlases were produced
for fire insurance purposes. They diagram every city building and
structure in great detail and are superb for studying the physical
characteristics of existing and demolished buildings and structures.

Local libraries have Sanborns only for the City of Buffalo, not
the towns or villages. The exception is BECPL and UB,
which subscribe to the Digital
Sanborn Maps, which includes all
of New York state.

Few
Buffalo architects or buildings have had books
written about them. That's where Vertical Files come in. They are
collections of newspaper clippings, journal articles, brochures, and
pamphlets
about city planning, urban design, local architects, and
major buildings & residences.

This
group of records falls into the Long Shot
category. There are cases in which owners leave properties
to their heirs, leaving a paper trial that helps document the existence
and ownership of houses.